Dugan Fife, on '94 Michigan team: 'It never occurred to me we would lose'

Mar. 28, 2013

Dugan Fife, left, was an integral part of Michigan's 1994 NCAA tournament run, a team that featured four of the Fab Five -- including Jalen Rose, right. "When you play with Jalen, Juwan, Jimmy and Ray, they weren't afraid of anything," Fife said. / JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Sports Writer

When the former Michigan guard saw Saturday that U-M reached its first Sweet 16 since 1994, he flashed back to that tournament.

Riding the wave of the Fab Five, the idea that the Wolverines could finish short of a title was unimaginable.

"It never occurred to me we would lose, even if we played terrible," said Fife, a sophomore on that '93-94 team.

He had walked into a tornado of attention, arriving the fall after the Fab Five became famous, spending his freshman season riding the high-speed train to U-M's second straight title game.

It ended with the "time-out game," the 1993 North Carolina loss that sent Chris Webber to the pros, but enough talent was left to leave hope for the 1993-94 season.

Behind All-Big Ten stars Juwan Howard and Jalen Rose, plus the other remaining Fabs -- Jimmy King and Ray Jackson -- and adding Fife as an outside gunner, the Wolverines expected another long tournament run.

Sliding past Pepperdine in overtime in the opener, then Texas and Joe Smith's Maryland team in the Sweet 16, they reached the Elite Eight. Michigan had a shot late to knock off No. 1 seed Arkansas, but lost, 76-68, as Arkansas went on to win the title.

The locker-room scene at Reunion Arena was downtrodden, and the players knew things would change. But that night in Dallas, no one thought U-M would wait 19 years for another Sweet 16 appearance.

It's fitting that this one also comes in the Dallas area as the fourth-seeded Wolverines will face top-seeded Kansas on Friday at Cowboys Stadium.

1993-94 was a season of constant slights, or at least the players believed so.

"When you play with Jalen, Juwan, Jimmy and Ray, they weren't afraid of anything," Fife said. "We went into the game determined. I don't know if we were favored, but we always felt we were underdogs."

Not only was Arkansas the top seed and U-M No. 3 in the Midwest Regional, the Razorbacks had President Bill Clinton cheering them on from the stands.

He was a former governor of Arkansas, a lifelong Razorbacks fan, and in an unhappy coincidence for Michigan, the president happened to be in Dallas that night.

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"At the time I wondered, why'd the president show up to this game? It wasn't the Final Four," said Jay Smith, an assistant on U-M's staff and now on Detroit Mercy's staff. "I almost think it swayed the crowd a little bit more."

Being so close to Arkansas, the Wolverines already were outnumbered in the stands -- even though Jackson and King had played high school ball in Texas -- and "I've never heard 'sooey' so much in my life," Smith said.

But the Wolverines stayed close, mostly because they had Howard. He carried them through four tournament games, averaging 29 points and 12.8 rebounds, and was named the region's most outstanding player even with the loss.

As U-M walked off the court, Clinton shook their hands. Fife says it was a gesture the distraught players couldn't appreciate at the moment.

Rose and Howard bolted for the NBA that summer. The 1995 team was bounced by Western Kentucky in the first round and, though there were NCAA appearances in 1996 and 1998, the '94 team was the end of an era.

The Ed Martin booster scandal led to violations and NCAA sanctions, and it wasn't until after coach John Beilein arrived in 2007 that U-M even sniffed the tournament again.

U-M freshman Glenn Robinson III was born three months before the 1994 tournament started (one in which his father led Purdue to the Southeast Regional final).

Friday, those '94 guys will be watching.

"A little bit gets lost in these (new) atmospheres," Smith said, as there might be more than 40,000 in Cowboys Stadium -- but the sound will be nothing like Reunion Arena was. "There was 18,000 there. It wasn't the big dome. Where it was loud, Sooey, and Arkansas-Michigan, it was vibrant in that building."

Fife endured U-M's down years as a broadcaster but still remains connected to the program with good friend and U-M teammate Travis Conlan on Beilein's staff.

Smith has no more ties to U-M, as is the case with most of the coaches from the Steve Fisher era because of the Martin scandal. But there's a collage over Smith's desk with photos from those deep NCAA runs. Everyone looks much younger -- after all it was 19 years ago.

He has been back to the NCAA tournament as Central Michigan's head coach and as a U-D assistant, yet he still says nothing was like those seasons with Michigan.

"I think it was like traveling with the Beatles a little bit," he said. "An exciting time."

Beat writer Mark Snyder will answer your U-M questions in a live chat at 11 a.m. Thursday at freep.com/sports. Submit early questions here. Then join special writer Nick Meyer for a live blog of the Michigan-Kansas NCAA tournament game Friday night.